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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
is portrayed in comics then explains how it would really work.
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 01/18/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment #27
Originally written as installment #274 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 1387, November 19, 1999 issue
Our long, national nightmare is over.
"No Man's Land" has ended.
Not painlessly. Not mercilessly. And, certainly, not quickly enough. But it is--finally--over. So, to celebrate the fact that it's finally over, I thought I'd share with you the column I wrote about "No Man's Land" for Comics Buyer's Guide.
Well to celebrate the end and because ...
Did you know that a car's transmission fluid is blood red?
Neither did I, until the transmission on my year-old van ripped apart, opening up like a cheap
pinata and disgorging so much crimson on my driveway, it looks like they filmed Scream 3 there. All of which left me with the need to find a column I could do quick, like this one.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 27
by
Bob Ingersoll
I believed a man could fly.
I believed an arrow with a bulky boxing glove on it could fly.
I even believed a pair of glasses and a spit curl could ... I won't go there.
The point is, I read comics with my disbelief suspended higher than Stephen Hawkings' SAT scores. But I still don't believe "No Man's Land."
For those of you who have been in a cave so don't know about "No Man's Land," are you accepting reservations? "No Man's Land" is a story running in all the Batman books since last year when Gotham City was hit by a massive earthquake.
Already my disbelief was lower than half-mast.
Earthquakes? In Gotham City? This is an area which is, seismically speaking, about as active as tapioca pudding. There is a reason you don't read about all those 7.2's along the Eastern seaboard, and it ain't because the Gotham Tourism Board's been suppressing the news like an Amity shark attack.
Anyway, Gotham Bridge was falling down; along with most of the city. Prompting the question: would the federal government offer federal aid to rebuild? After all, the Feds rebuilt Homestead, Florida after it was leveled by a hurricane. FEMA bootstrapped San Francisco, after a temblor with no sense of sportsmanship interrupted the 1989 World Series. The Feds offered aid after the 1994 Northridge earthquake did to LA proper what "the trial of the century" did to its justice system.
But, no, the idiot plot of No Man's Land required the exact opposite. In Azrael # 49 a televangelist named Mr. Scratch argues that Gotham City is a "sinkhole of corruption" not deserving of the trillions of reconstruction dollars while "children are starving in the streets of our nation" and other, more needy, needs need the money. So, the feds do nothing.
(Wait a second! Mr. Scratch? And they buy his act? Jeez, hasn't anyone in Washington read Stephen Vincent Benet?)
Actually, "nothing" would have been preferable. Washington does worse than nothing.
Washington cuts off Gotham City. Not cuts it off from federal aid; cuts it off from the rest of the world. In Batman # 562, the president invokes "some forgotten loophole about national security," to issue an executive order quarantining Gotham. Gotham's people were given forty-eight hours to leave the city. After that, all the tunnels and bridges that connected the island city to the mainland were destroyed and Gotham became, "a prison for anyone unlucky enough to have chosen or been chosen to remain."
Forty-eight hours? I don't think it would have been physically possible for the seven million people living in Gotham City to pack up their belongings and traverse the handful of bridges and tunnels to leave the city in only two days. The sheer volume of traffic would have clogged those bridges and tunnels like my arteries after a meal at the Beef Barn.
And it's not just that the federal government won't help Gotham, it won't let anyone else help Gotham, either. Religious organizations with humanitarian food shipments are stopped short of the city, because the law says "nothing goes in, nothing comes out." Helicopters trying to airlift food and supplies are fired upon.
And all so that the government can save less than it spends in a year on toilet seats.
Meanwhile, during the first three months after the quarantine was imposed the Batman, Gotham City's protector--its heart and soul--was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere, because, if we are to believe Alfred's explanation, the Batman was--get this!--sulking.
Saying I had problems with No Man's Land's premise is like saying Napoleon had a little disagreement with those pesky Russians. I had more reservations that Priceline.com.
Let's start with the law. As far back as 1868, the Supreme Court recognized, in Crandall v. Nevada, that the Privileges and Immunity Clause contains a right to travel freely between the states. The Supreme Court has ruled states may not deny welfare benefits, voting rights or medical care to people who have lived there for less than a year. Based on this, it's doubtful the government could make an order forbidding people from living in the city of their choice stick.
(Let's not even think about the "deprivation of property without due process of law" problems this would entail, I don't have that much space available to me.)
Yes, I know orders like this have gone out for small communities that were condemned after natural disasters. But this is a major city. Even if Congress could do this constitutionally, it wouldn't. Gotham is the largest city of whatever state houses Gotham in this week's Hypertimed continuity, one of the biggest cities in the country. Imagine the effect on New York's economy if New York City were shut down or on California's economy if Los Angeles were given an eviction order. For that matter, imagine the effect on the nation's economy--on the world's economy--if New York, LA, Chicago or any major American city were shut down. The results of federal neglect of this magnitude would be far more injurious to the nation's economy than pumping in the funds necessary to rebuild Gotham. It would be economic, and political, suicide not to rebuild Gotham. Congress can be collectively stupid, it isn't suicidal.
Finally, even if the Constitution did allow quarantining Gotham and Congress were inclined to do so, it still wouldn't have happened. Not in the DC Universe.
Remember Adventures of Superman # 522? After Metropolis had been destroyed as thoroughly as Gotham, Martian Manhunter telepathically linked Superman, Perry White and Zatana so they could rebuild the entire city by magic. Are we supposed to believe the JLA decided, hell Gotham is Batman's responsibility, let him deal with it?
Or if not Zatana, how about the new Spectre? What, you think because Hal has rebuilt one city, he feels completely redeemed and would ignore Gotham?
Then there's this whole shooting down private helicopters air shipping aid thing. What, you can feed a stranger in Kosovo but Heaven forbid you should try to slip a few slices of Oscar Meyer to your Uncle Sid in Gotham?
Finally there's that whole "sulking" thing ...
No, this whole "No Man's Land" idea is a mish-mosh; illogical, illegal, unbelievable and it wouldn't happen, neither. To paraphrase John Donne, in this case "No Man's" is an iiiieeeeeee land.
BOB INGERSOLL
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